


Habits

by werebunny131



Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28006767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/werebunny131/pseuds/werebunny131
Summary: Charles had once self-identified as a creature of habit.
Relationships: Charles Deetz & Lydia Deetz, Charles Deetz/Delia Deetz, Past Charles Deetz/Emily Deetz
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Habits

Charles had once self-identified as a creature of habit. His alarm went off at the same time each morning, (6:45 AM). He would brush his teeth, hair, and beard, (applying the beard oil Emily had gotten him years ago) change into his business outfit (suit, naturally, with well-polished shoes) and proceed downstairs for breakfast. He would start with a cup of coffee, (black) along with a few slices of toast with a thin layer of butter. He would leave for work, have what he hoped was a productive day, then return around 4:30 PM. He would change into more comfortable clothes, (stretchier pants, but not as low as sweatpants) have dinner, watch T.V. with his family, and go to bed.

He would have lived that happy routine forever.

Then Emily had gotten sick. And everything changed in precisely the worst way.

He couldn’t go to work. His wife and daughter needed him, and he needed to be with them. Even when he did manage to drag himself into his office, he couldn’t focus. Couldn’t concentrate on houses and mortgages and stupid stupid customers with their petty nitpicking. Who cared about how high up the power outlets were in the living room? Who cared how many times he’d ordered take-out? Who cared how many calls from well-meaning friends and family he had let ring and ring and ring? HIS WIFE WAS DYING.

And he could do nothing.

After the end, the funeral, the drive home, he had just...put another foot forward. He’d gotten back to work. He had cooked meals for himself and his daughter. He had purchased his own beard oil when it ran out. He had just kept going on with the routine that no longer brought him joy, but he couldn’t work up the energy to change. Even then, the routine was different. He hadn’t noticed how much brighter the house was with his wife there. His coffee was bitter, because she had always added a pinch of sugar to his cup. The meals were bland, because she had played with spices and interesting flavours. His beard grew coarse, because she had splurged on the nicer oils for him. His routine had been so much more than just what he had done on his own.

But by the time he fully realized that, the hollow routine was all he had.

And then…

Delia. Moving. Ghosts. Demons. The Netherworld. His daughter. Lydia.

Lydia.

Then, his routine was not just broken. It was shattered into pieces and ground to dust. Then that dust had been put into a kiln and hand-blown into a lovely vase with no resemblance to anything and stuck up on a shelf because it looked ‘quirky’. His life had turned into the epilogue of an 80’s movie. Two ghosts with better parenting skills than he could ever reach, a wife who refused to deny the beauty in everything, and a demon man-boy who delighted in challenging that belief in beauty every day. And Lydia.

Lydia, who he had tried to convince himself was fine. Lydia, who had lashed out in righteous anger that he had refused to acknowledge. Lydia, who had seen a portal to the afterlife as an escape, as a goal. Lydia, who had been hurting, just as he had.

Now, Lydia who smiled again. Lydia who laughed at a demon’s hijinks. Lydia who came to him when she had questions and listened to his answers. Lydia who would then go off and do whatever she pleased, but with Emily’s willfulness and his own stubbornness encoded in her very DNA, he honestly wasn’t surprised. 

And when he didn’t have an answer that satisfied her, he wasn’t alone. Adam provided the more handy parts of fatherhood he’d never fully grasped. With Barbara’s warm rock-solid patience, and Delia providing more quirky left-field thinking than even Emily at her most caffeinated, they were a veritable swiss-army-knife of parenting. He was grateful. (And not jealous. Not in the slightest. He refused to be envious of the dead, no matter how much better they were at parenting.) 

It was almost normal, as long as one could ignore that one set of ‘parents’ occasionally went through walls.

Things never truly settled into a ‘routine’ as-such, but Charles managed to find his old habits returning.

His alarm went off at the same time each morning, (7:15 AM). He would brush his teeth, hair, and beard, (applying the beard oil Lydia had gotten him for Hanukkah) change into his business outfit (suit and polished shoes) and proceed downstairs for breakfast. He would start with a cup of coffee, (black with a teaspoon of sugar) along with a few slices of toast with a thin layer of butter (no matter what vegan-oil-spread Delia attempted to switch it with. His arteries were fine). He would leave for work, have what he hoped was a productive day, then return around 4 PM. He would change into more comfortable clothes, (sweatpants and a loose t-shirt) have dinner (whatever meal the Maitlands had decided to experiment with, or takeout if it had been a failure), watch T.V. with his family (alive and dead...and...other), and go to bed.

He would happily live that life forever.

(But if it all turned upside down on them again, if they were together, he doesn’t think he’d mind.)

**Author's Note:**

> Felt kind of rushed at the end, but it was better to get it out than not.
> 
> Let me know if you want more!


End file.
